The Social Gym: The First Bootcamp

Today was fucking crazy, holy aids. Social Gym’s been in place for about a month now, and I’m starting to become more confident with it. Facing my fears, getting the feedback necessary to move forward and develop my passions to the level that I’m at.

I was uncomfortable going into today, extremely uncomfortable. I believe it to be because I was unsure of how I was going to handle this bootcamp. If there’s one big thing I’ve realized today, is that asking myself the “how” questions is irrelevant. I feel like I just need to jump in, and see what happens. If I fail, that’s good. That’s feedback telling me that I need to improve something. Failure is simply an external element of your life, that tells you that your process isn’t good enough yet.

Life is all about process, life is all about growth. Anytime somebody fails, it isn’t because they are inadequate. It is because they are not ready yet. The un–intelligent individual fails than gives up, thinking that they aren’t worth it. The smart way to look at any “failure” is feedback, telling you that you need to tighten something up.

I want to talk about value, and perceptions of value. The last 12 days Mikey B and I have been going on the street and approaching random people without purpose. The sole purpose was to improve our social skills and push our comfort zones. Over the course of the past 12 days in field (Been 4 weeks in total, 3 days per week) we’ve learned that we’re on to something more than just pushing your comfort zone.

At first, it was scary to go out. For real, I would feel a certain anxiety whenever I walked onto the streets. As the days pass, it gets less scary to walk out of my house. My anxiety lay in something else now, my anxiety lay in continuing the conversation.

Before this weekend, I realized that it was because I was talking about shit that I didn’t care about at all. This weekend I came to a couple of realizations so far. The first one is this: if you’re training your social skills, and you start becoming selective with who you talk to, you’re looking for reasons not to talk to people. If you start to look for reasons not to talk to some people, you’ll look for reasons not to talk to everyone. Now, when you see that girl that you’re attracted to, instead of looking for a reason to talk to her, you’re looking for a reason to walk away.

Ahh, that was the mindset at first. Now there’s more though. This is the mindset that I’ve began to cultivate over the past couple of days. Instead of looking for reasons not to talk to people, I’m looking for reasons to talk to everyone. “Hey, really quick, I like your jacket. Where’d you get it?” Is the reason to talk to “X” individual. Than I’ll see if that reason lines up with my perception of value. Do I already have a winter jacket? Yes. That means that talking to this person isn’t worth my time when I’m not on Social Gym.

During Social Gym, though, I’m talking to everybody. The reason I’m doing this, is so that I have the ability to talk to anybody. If I’m consistently facing my fears, and overcoming stronger emotions, I’ll be in touch with my core emotions. I believe that the ego is designed to keep you emotionally numb. When fear arises, insecurity arises, lack of self worth comes to the surface… the logical mind plays a part in justifying the reasons behind acting through the emotional mind. I believe we were designed to be emotional creatures, and the logical part of your mind was designed to show you how to BEST convey your emotion, not how to mask it.

The ego is designed to keep you emotionally numb. You feel scared, so you fight somebody. You feel insecure, so you point out a flaw in someone else, so that the environment’s focus is off of yourself. You feel a low sense of self worth, so you validate the identity that you’d love to be through language of vision, and memories. “I’m going to be a football player!” “I want to loose 30 pounds.” “I used to be such a great fighter.” The ego is designed to keep you emotionally numb.

The only way to overcome your ego is to face your emotions. This means that when you see something that scares the fuck out of you, you should be doing it. There’s always going to be a reason not to do it. “I don’t have time,” “It’s not worth my time,” but understand that these justifications that you’re making, that I’m making, for inaction, is not who I am. This is my ego speaking, my logical mind.

I believe the ego to be communicating with the logical mind, and the emotional being to be communicating through the emotional mind. Men tend to veer from their emotions, thus, have bigger egos than women. Women tend to embrace their emotion, discussing it and venting through it to their friends. Men mask their emotion with external validation, validation by language and denial of the emotion all together.

At the core of our being, we are all emotional creatures. The one who communicates emotionally is the one who prospers in this world. Value is based on emotion, the more value that you give, the more positive the emotion that you instill in somebody else. The more value that you take, the more negative the emotion that you instill in somebody else. Social Dynamics says that you give value freely, this means that you continuously instill positive emotions in other people without expecting anything in return.

This means that you’ve got to be validated by the process, because expecting something in return means that you would want them to validate you back through language. If someone has to validate you back to get your sense of happiness, this means that you’re not validated by the process of anything. You’re validated by language. If you’re validated by language, even if it’s for the right reasons, you’re slacking off on the process of the present moment. What is the process of the present moment? Living up to your ideal version of your identity, by every day, taking steps towards that identity. Living by process means that you know who you want to become, and every day you take a step towards becoming that person. Although we may never be perfect, you keep moving forward.

Failure is only failure for those who give up. For those who dedicate themselves to the process, failure is one step closer to success. Failure just means that you’re not ready yet. Learn the lesson from your failure, and move forward more aware of how to be ready for anything.

Thanks for reading,

Brian Mark

About BrianBrian is a firm believer in living in the present. Brian lives his life by the philosophy “Act for the future, not because of the past.” He is a passionate writer, a sober socialite and aspires to be a positive influence to everyone he interacts with. Read more about Brian here.